Gates
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Contents
Biography
Drafted
Gates was one of the very few (less than a handful) free thinkers on his homeworld of Vyrga, where everybody else shared the same opinions. As such, he was ostracized by the natives for his political views, which leaned towards communism. While often pegged as a revolutionary, Gates never used violence to achieve his ends.
To his dismay, this would come to an end when the Matriarch of Vyrga drafted him to represent their homeworld in the Legion of Super-Heroes. Vyrga hoped to gain influence and recognition for this act, but Gates was unwilling to join the "Teenage Death Squad", abhorring the use of force. He successfully evaded Leviathan and Chameleon when they came to pick him up for the draft.
This wouldn't last long, though, when Gates was sent to Earth shortly after the Daxamite invasion. He arrived at a particularly bad time for the Legion: Kinetix had been depowered and had gone into space, XS had been lost in time, Brainiac 5 had been arrested, leader Cosmic Boy had, at President Chu's request, removed Live Wire, Ultra Boy and Jan Arrah from the team and their headquarters had just suffered major damage. This caused deputy leader Leviathan to erupt at Cosmic Boy for accepting Gates and Star Boy at this time instead of standing up for their other teammates. Compounding this was Gates' refusal to take part in any Legion training sessions, and it didn't help that Gates kept espousing his views. He was the only Legionnaire to not immediately agree to gathering the Fatal Five to help combat the Sun-Eater on President Chu's orders, but later accompanied Invisible Kid to gather the Empress.
Gates proved his mettle during the Fatal Five battle; he tried to help Chameleon against the Empress, and distracted Validus while giving Star Boy instructions on how to defeat the creature. This earned him and Star Boy some measure of respect from Leviathan. After the Legion regrouped, Gates was on the squad sent to prevent the Titan army from attacking Braal. He teleported himself and Saturn Girl aboard the flagship, and with Micah Aven's help they were able to stop the Titan army.
Freedom?
After R.J. Brande assumed the presidency of the United Planets and gave the Legion autonomy, Gates was the only Legionnaire besides Andromeda who wanted to leave. However, unlike Andromeda, Gates' homeworld prevented him from leaving. Gates was unable to understand Star Boy's dismay over his homeworld, Xanthu, ordering him to return, but after some grumbling, Gates resigned himself to his Legion membership.
He accompanied Star Boy to Xanthu to help resolve the issue of his membership, and often butted heads with leviathan on the trip, speaking out against Leviathan's "perpetuating of hateful stereotypes" when the latter called Xanthu a world of hicks. He also disagreed with the "violent" method of battling in a cage match over Star Boy's membership.
Team 20
Later, when the Emerald Eye possessed the entire Legion, Gates was the first to regain individuality enough to protest the Eye's imperialism when Kinetix fractured the group-mind, but was then turned into an egg by Kinetix. He was part of the group that was flung through time to late 20th century Earth, and was annoyed that a technician yelled in surprise at seeing him, considering this a form of discrimination.
During the Sun-Eater crisis, Gates was shocked to find that some homeless people were living in the sewers, and argued with Ultra Boy that they should be moved to shelter. Only the intervention of Ferro helped settle the issue, and Gates and Ultra Boy agreed to help the homeless during their stay in the 20th century.
Later, when Cosmic Boy's mind had been shut down during an altercation with Doctor Psycho, Brainiac 5 managed to contact Rond Vidar and the Legionnaires remaining in the 30th century and instruct them on how to build a time machine. However, the entire Legion was stranded in the timestream due to Lori Morning's tampering. Gates and his teleportation disks were essential to Brainy's plan to escape the timestream, and he was returned to the 20th century... or was he?
Vivisection!
Gates then found himself in an alternate reality, where his teammates retained their powers, but not their memories and were living in an intolerant 1950's USA. Gates still retained his memories, though, and was captured while trying to retrieve his teammates. Luckily for him, the other Legionnaires were taken into custody alongside him, and saved him just as he was about to be vivisected. They were then returned to the late 20th century Earth they had been stranded in.
Team Player
During the rest of their stay, Gates had considerably warmed up to the rest of the Legion, and no longer resented being a team member. He helped console Saturn Girl when Brainy refused to help her against Dr. Psycho; he made good on his agreement with Ultra Boy to help the homeless; and he was so impressed by the Legion's show of solidarity when their teammates attempted to rescue them from the 30th century that he relented on his calls for the Legion's dissolution.
The one teammate that he did have continued friction with, though, was Brainiac 5. Brainy told Gates that he looked down on him for using his intelligence to form mere opinions, at which Gates teleported out, sniping, "Oh? Is that your opinion?"
Gates was also instrumental in defeating Mantis during the Genesis event. One of the parademons with Mantis had mentioned a pod, and Gates quickly made the connection to the Imskian glo-beetle, which gathers energy through its pod. Gates found the pod and had Ultra Boy absorb Mantis' energy, preventing him from recharging and knocking him out, thus ending the battle.
Elsewhile...
During this time, the Legionnaires in the 30th century had gotten a distress call from Vyrga requesting Gates' assistance. Invisible Kid then had Chameleon pretend to be Gates, and a small group of Legionnaires met with Vyrga's matriarch. It seemed that Mantis Morlo, a free thinker and a fan of Gates, had exposed himself to chemicals which had mutated his mind and body, and was now acting as a terrorist to force the Vyrgans to "evolve" by not thinking alike anymore. He had also created a group of semi-sentient humanoids, which were revealed to have been behind the attack on Legion headquarters a while back, while the Legionnaires had been fighting the Fatal Five. Chameleon was able to defeat Mantis Morlo, though, and the Vyrgans, who had initially been displeased that offworlders had visited their planet, became more open to the idea of outside contact.
Return and New Friends
Gates later returned to the 30th century, where the entire Legion reunited. He wouldn't be able to rest long, though; he accompanied Kinetix, Brainiac 5 and Umbra to investigate a space anomaly which M'Onel and Andromeda had gone to earlier. However, they were somehow taken over the anomaly, and were pulled out only through Leland McCauley and Evolvo testing out a teleportation device which was powered by the anomaly. However, Brainiac 5 and Kinetix had been altered, Zoë remaining in a dazed state and Brainy becoming more patient and emotionally intelligent. Due to his "upgrade", Gates dubbed him "Brainiac 5.1", a name which Brainy adopted.
When Brainy returned home to Colu to see his mother, Brainiac 4, who had abandoned him at birth, Gates sensed something amiss and brought Spark and Live Wire with him to follow Brainy. They were just in time to stop Brainiac 4 from murdering their friend, though they weren't in time to stop the trauma from causing Brainy to withdraw into his colder, more logical state. Gates, however, refused to give up on his friend, and was able to talk him through this difficult time, convincing him not to give up on his emotions and his friends.
Gates would continue to play an important part in the Legion, such as with the battle against the Elements of Disaster and helping reconstitute the supposedly deceased Atom'X's and Blast-Off's energies into a single being. Gates and Brainy were also alone on the Legion Outpost when the Fatal Five and the Emerald Eye attacked, but they managed to escape and summon their teammates to help defeat the Five.
Blight and Capture
When the Blight invaded Earth, Gates was among the missing. In fact, he had been "chokeweeded", and used to provide sustenance to the Blight's stem by being turned into food for it. He was later freed, and stood alongside the Legion as they faced a Rift that would have collapsed space itself. While he was not one of the Legionnaires who had been sucked inside the Rift, he had exhausted himself trying to teleport people off the Outpost, causing him to misteleport himself. He was picked up by a Science Police cruiser, and since he was listed as missing, they were free to use him in experiments to find the root of his powers. Ra's al Ghul, posing as Leland McCauley, the new president of the United Planets, then found that Gates' powers were a latent mutation in his people. He killed millions of Vyrgans while looking for latent teleporters, genetically altering them with Winathian and Carggite DNA to create more clones, all the while covering it up with stories of a Vyrgan pandemic.
Freedom... again
Gates was later able to escape when the reformed Legion came to rescue him. His captivity had weakened him, but it hadn't eroded his mind or his personality; Gates sarcastically commented that it was "about time" and also attacked the establishment for its actions. When the Legion stormed the Presidential Palace, it was Gates who discovered that M'Onel had been shot, and 'ported him to medical attention. He later joined the assault on Ra's al Ghul's headquarters on the Moon, and saved Kid Quantum (Jazmin Cullen) just as Ra's was about to kill her, severing Ra's arm in the process. This act would earn him Ra's ire; when Ra's broke loose from captivity on Legion World, Gates, Kinetix and Shikari went to confront him, and Gates was saved from death only by M'Onel's appearance.
Gates was one of the four Legionnaires who accompanied Brande on his good-will tour through the Kwai Galaxy, and was captured alongside the others by the Credo. He was freed by the Legion Espionage Squad and a returned Live Wire, and has continued to serve with the Legion.
Powers and abilites
Gates can create glowing green, circular teleportation "gates", which people, objects and even energy can travel freely through to emerge from a partner gate at a location he himself defines mentally (it is also possible to make the trip in reverse, travelling from the partner gate to the original gate). Gates can teleport objects even though they are not directly beside him.
Gates' "gates" have sharp "edges", shown when Gates accidentally severed one of Ra's al Ghul's arms when teleporting The Legion #8.
At first, Gates was shown as unable to teleport if he could not see where he was going Legion of Super-Heroes v4 #99. However, it was later shown that he could do so; however, he preferred not to due to the danger of materializing inside a solid object Legionnaires #61.
Gates' "gates" have a range of about 50 meters.
Personality
Gates is highly intelligent, opinionated and articulate, and longs for people to hear his thoughts in politics and society. Unfortunately, he has met few beings who are interested un those things, which irks him to no end.
At first, he was resentful of his draft and would refuse to attend training sessions, constantly calling the team a "teenage death squad" and belittling Cosmic Boy's orders. "We wouldn't DREAM of thinking for ourselves!"
However, a passionate defense of the Legion by Chuck Taine did cause him to rethink his position, and Gates became a better team player after that. He would even invite his teammates to share a bowl of slugs with him, though understandably, they all politely declined.
He had a stormy relationship with Brainiac 5 at first, but after the Anomaly the two became friends, with Gates even encouraging Brainy after the trauma of nearly being murdered by his own mother.
